Subsidizing The Sun -
Weapons Labs Intrude
on Private Sector
Weapons Labs Intrude
on Private Sector
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| Weapons Labs Intrude on Private Sector As you drive south on Wyoming from Lomas, a street like 100 others in Albuquerque, you pass the signs and billboards of private businesses urging you to stop and spend your money. The businesses beckon and persuade with signs because we don’t allow them to put up barricades or use force to make us give them our money. Their survival is totally dependent on our freely choosing their goods or services. When you pass through the gate to Sandia Base, the clutter of signs stops. No one who works there need ask you for anything. They already have what they want, your tax money. We don’t resent this, we have given the tax collectors coercive power over us for this because the business of Sandia Labs is very special. They develop and make weapons to defend us. We all know that we must give up a little freedom; we serve in the military service and pay our taxes in order to guarantee the enormous freedoms we otherwise enjoy. After all, in Russia there is no equivalent of Wyoming Blvd. It is hard for us in New Mexico to remember that the military and weapons labs are unfortunate necessities for the country, rather than simply rich local resources. This is because the average person who works at the weapons labs makes so much more money than his counterpart in the civilian economy. Here in New Mexico, the servants of society, the people who work at defense, are generally much wealthier than those who have hired them. Military bases or weapons labs with their high wages, which taxpayers pay, are not models to which society should aspire. Rather, they are spots of sickness we must inflict on ourselves, like vaccinations, to keep our society able to fight off the fullblown disease. (It is also good to remember, if you feel jealous, that the high pay for a skilled scientist developing ways to evaporate thousands of men, women and children with nuclear bombs is certainly reasonable. This is unpleasant work. Any intelligent, sensitive man deserves high pay for taking on such a chore which our leaders have decided is necessary.) Unfortunately today, many things that have nothing to do with defense go on at Sandia Labs and Los Alamos. All those high-paying jobs are not for people doing crucial defense work—but they are still bleeding our national economy. Short-sighted journalists and politicians have been tempted into a kind of treachery. They forget that the tax- supported industries, though necessary for defense, are inefficient, based on coercion, and a threat to the civilian economy. Here we are, home of some of the most productive weapons labs on the globe and what do we do? We develop a danger our weapons can’t defend us from— the “peaceful weapons lab.” It snuggles up right next to the weapons program and uses many of the same facilities. It has nothing to do with defending the citizens whose money it spends so lavishly. It is a wonderful place to work, same high pay as a real weapons lab, good benefits, no competition—even the protestors love you. The old-time weapons people could point their missiles at Russia and save us from an invasion that would end with all of us as government slaves. But what can they do when the same enemy—government control—seeps under the door? You can catch the sneaky approach in the succession of names: War Department, Defense Department, Department of Energy! A new division is opened next door to the weapons building. Solar energy. Short-sighted journalists and politicians are overjoyed. They tell the public “the weapons labs used to build weapons, now they do good things too: geothermal energy, solar energy, medicine.” To do these “good” things, the civilian economy is set back $1,000 for every $100 of value they receive. (I say this after watching the solar programs at Los Alamos and Sandia for 12 years.) Somewhere on America’s Wyoming Blvds., a business closes, or simply never gets built, because there are a couple of new employees at the labs. To read the papers and listen to the politicians you would think we would all get richer if we simply had Sandia Labs hire everyone in Albuquerque—move the gates to Nine Mile Hill and Tijeras Canyon—have the scientists and other employees go still further in usurping civilians’ work. They could get into the drapery business and pizzas. We could eat “free” $80 lab burgers and all wear little plastic badges. Steve Baer |